Abstract
Music is a tool used in daily life in order to mitigate negative and enhance positive emotions. Listeners may orientate their engagement with music around its ability to facilitate particular emotional responses and to subsequently regulate mood. Existing scales have aimed to gauge both individual coping orientations in response to stress, as well as individual use of music for the purposes of mood regulation. This study utilised pre-validated scales through an online survey (N = 233) in order to measure whether music’s use in mood regulation is influenced by coping orientations and/or demographic variables in response to the lockdown measures imposed in the United Kingdom, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst factor analyses show that the existing theoretical structure of the COPE model has indicated a poor fit for clustered coping orientations, a subsequent five-factor structure was determined for coping orientations in response to lockdown. Analyses include observations that positive reframing and active coping (Positive Outlook) were strong predictors of music use in mood regulation amongst listener’s coping strategies, as was Substance Use. Higher Age indicated having a negative effect on music’s use in mood regulation, whilst factors such as gender were not seen to be significant in relation to the use of music in mood regulation within this context. These results provide insight into how individuals have engaged with music orientated coping strategies in response to a unique stressor.
Highlights
Many studies have aimed to measure responses to stresses amongst individuals, few have had such an opportunity to measure these stresses during a specified and ubiquitous context, such as that of a global health crisis
Music use may assist as a practical and adaptive coping strategy against stressors and can be used for ‘affect’ regulation and coping in daily life; as well as in response to tangible stressors (Miranda and Claes, 2009; Silverman, 2020). It is within these theoretical frameworks that this study aims to understand whether coping strategies and the use of music in mood regulation are related; and whether existing scales may be applicable to the context of lockdown
Positive Outlook, a factor comprising of active coping and positive reframing, has appeared to be a significant predictor of music in mood regulation, suggesting that positive mindsets and pro-active measures taken during lockdown may be an overall predictor of using music for the purposes of mood regulation
Summary
Many studies have aimed to measure responses to stresses amongst individuals, few have had such an opportunity to measure these stresses during a specified and ubiquitous context, such as that of a global health crisis. Music has the ability to induce strong emotional responses in order to alleviate stress and negative emotions caused by some of the troubling experiences that we may encounter in our lives (Roy et al, 2009) One such stressful experience, that has become universal, is that of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The measures that were included only allowed residents of the United Kingdom to leave their homes for one of four reasons: shopping for basic essentials (as infrequently as possible), one form of daily exercise, medical emergencies and travelling to or from work (but only where absolutely necessary) These measures meant individuals had to work from home, whilst households were not permitted to mix, and children were not to attend school. Measures were initially eased on 13th May 2020 in England (BBC News, 2020a)
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